Farah Blantrice

Zack K. De Piero

English 15

September 20,2018

Infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge

intended to present information quickly and clearly. Today, in the United States, we all

face the same problem that of wealth inequality. Of course, not everyone will agree that

this is a problem, but Wealth Inequality infographics show that a majority of the United

States is facing poverty and imbalances such as name based racial discrimination and

education. I will be analyzing three infographics from two different websites. One of the

infographics is from a site called “ Fastcompany,” and the other two is from “ Visually.”

The infographics are all similar and easily identify the purpose as well as the

conventions, providing an effective argument for its audience, the american people.

According to the reading “Murder Rhetorically Speaking,” by Janet Boyd (89) “Jargon is

the terminology used by those in a particular profession or group to facilitate clear and

precise communication.” The designers of these infographics all use similar jargon,

giving its audience an informative tone. A tone that that is instructive, factual and

educational.

When looking at infographics, the same conventions tend to catch my eye. If you ask

me, I think the same conventions apply with every infographic. That is, they all have

several graphs, visual representations, statistics, the information presented is always

authentic , and the main topic is broken down into subtopics. Infographics help an
audience better understand information by utilizing graphics to enhance the human

visual system’s ability to see patterns and trends.

My first Wealth Inequality infographic is one made by Troy Stange and was found on

the site “ Visual.”The title of this infographic is “Ownership Of Financial Wealth Of

America” I see that the audience is America and that the tone is informative. Stange’s

title clearly shows that his purpose is to inform and encourage his readers to take

ownership of the financial wealth in America. Stange’s infographic has visual

representation of information that shows a few companies that have been profiting since

2008. According to Stange, these companies’ high profits caused the bottom half of

America to suffer. Unfortunately, Stange does not provide any data or statistics, but he

does add a quote, which was from Bernie Sanders’ speech on the senate floor,

alongside a link. My earlier assumptions were not correct. There was no graphs as I

expected, but there were statistics .This particular infographic did not have subtopics.

However, it did provide some brief information under percentages to show how

unevenly America's wealth is being divided.

My second infographic is designed by Rodney Coffey. This infographic was also found

on “ Visual.” This infographic is to advise the audience (America), about the distribution

of wealth in the United States. This time more dramatically. After analyzing this graph, I

struggled to decide whether the tone was informal or informative. Later I concluded that

this graphic is an informative tone because it gives a lot of information through its

sketches. He does this by having human drawings with each one representing 1% of

the U.S population and having drawings of bundles of money each representing 1% of

the wealth in the U.S. From the point of view where the United States land is divided
amongst wealth there would only be three groups. The top 1% would occupy 3% whilst

the next 9% will occupy 40% and the last 90% will occupy 17%. When put this way the

endangerment that we are facing seems more bright. He shows his readers a set of

patterns and trends going on. Once again what I predicted was incorrect, there was no

graphs yet there was statistics and visual representations in his infographic.

My third and last infographic is by a designer named Morgan Clendaniel. This

infographic was found on “ Fast Company, “ and has an informative tone. Her title “ 15

Facts About U.S Inequality That Everyone Should Know “ makes it clear that her

audience is the United States. I believe Clendaniel purpose is to inform her readers on

the many forms of inequality going on that we do not know about or are paying attention

to. Out of all my three infographics this one holds the most information. It holds all

together 15 different graphs, statistics and visual representations. The infographic itself

presents to its audience 15 different topics. These 15 topics are name based racial

discrimination, occupational sex segregation, child poverty, productivity and real

income, discouraged workers, gender gap in pay, health insurance, immigrants and

inequality, wage inequality, deregulation of labor market, racial gaps in education,

education wage premium, homelessness and ceo pay. For each Clendaniel provides

either a graph, data table or visual representation. She makes sures to provide a brief

description of each inequality problem that she presents. For example, the infographic

tells it’s audience that children of minorities are most likely to live without health

insurance. It also shows us that Minorities are likely to dropout of school, and

immigrants are less likely to receive an education. Wages have remained the same
which have caused contribution to the top 10% of the wealthiest Americans controlling

nearly three-quarters of all the money in America.

These creators used similar techniques to create their pieces. They might not have all

used graphs or visual representations but all three made sure that their audience was

able to grasp a big chunk of information quick and clearly. Stange, Coffey and

Clendaniel all had the same tone. They were informative and straight to the point and

added short explanations about their resources and who or where they got the idea as

well as the information to create their infographics from. Although the three designers

had the same message they displayed it differently. For example, Stange showed

companies profiting and the effect of people profiting while Coffey displayed his through

drawings of people and money, and Clendaniel through multiple forms of different topics

with graphs and statistics. Their message was that our country is being mismanaged.

We are all facing wealth inequality problems today because the exigence of today's

economic system demands it. These designers wants us to see how imbalanced we are

as a country.

This precise multimedia genre appeals to logos. As Carrol said “Logos is commonly

defined as argument from reason, and it usually appeals to an audience’s intellectual

side,” (52) and that is exactly what all the designers did. They all appealed to our

intellectual side and tried to open our eyes so that we can see what is really going on

and how it is affecting us all as one. Constraints play a big role in this genre. You can

not write paragraphs to get your audience to learn a set of information, it has to be done

through graphic visual representations. With an Wealth Inequality infographic you are

able to swiftly learn new information without having to sit and read pages and pages
which will take hours. Visual representations helps us take in information quicker and

more efficiently. That is what makes a Wealth Inequality Infographic a Wealth Inequality

Infographic.